Former Philadelphia Eagles star Jason Kelce kicked off his first year of retirement with a bang.
In addition to joining "Monday Night Countdown" as an analyst, the likely future Hall of Famer and his brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, signed a new deal with Amazon's Wondery worth over $100 million for their podcast, "New Heights."
Kelce's wife, Kylie, is pregnant with the couple's fourth child. And she launched the podcast "Not Gonna Lie With Kylie Kelce," which earned the No. 1 spot on both Spotify and Apple podcast charts with its premiere, bumping Joe Rogan's "The Joe Rogan Experience" to second place.
While it seems everything the Kelces touch turns to gold, the same can't be said about "They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce," which premiered on ESPN on Jan. 4.
Puck's John Ourand posted on X on Jan. 6, "I've seen the numbers for ESPN's first episode of "They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce," and they're not particularly good: 290,000 viewers."
"Comps are tough," Ourand continued. "Two weeks ago, that time slot had more than 700,000 viewers. But that figure was inflated by the Indiana-Notre Dame playoff game earlier in the night. Same time period (1 a.m. EST) last January averaged 436,000.
"From ESPN's perspective, viewership numbers from a late-night talk show that has a five-episode run don't matter nearly as much as other aspects of this programming deal. ESPN is happy to be in business with Jason Kelce, regardless."
The premiere of Kelce's late-night show aired long after an ESPN NFL doubleheader in which the Baltimore Ravens crushed the Cleveland Browns, 35-10, on Saturday late afternoon and Cincinnati defeated Pittsburgh, 19-17, in the evening to start Week 18.
The Hollywood Reporter's Alex Weprin posted of Kelce's viewership numbers, "IMO their strategy of streaming it on YouTube (which they just dont do for other shows) was an acknowledgement that it was not a show for cable subscribers likely to be awake at 1 AM, and were maybe hoping it would click with the younger cord-cutter crowd."
Maybe the show, which tapes in front of a live audience in Philadelphia, can draw a bigger audience during Wild Card Weekend.
